Nabonidus

Nabonidus

(năbənī`dəs), d. 538? B.C., last king of the Chaldaean dynasty of Babylonia. He was not of NebuchadnezzarNebuchadnezzar, d. 562 B.C., king of Babylonia (c.605–562 B.C.), son and successor of Nabopolassar. In his father's reign he was sent to oppose the Egyptians, who were occupying W Syria and Palestine. At Carchemish he met and defeated (605 B.C......Click the link for more information.'s family, and it is possible that he usurped the throne. He was absorbed in antiquarian and religious speculations, and he built temples while the state was left undefended. He was unpopular with both the priests and the people. When the Persian threat of Cyrus the GreatCyrus the Great, d. 529 B.C., king of Persia, founder of the greatness of the Achaemenids and of the Persian Empire. According to Herodotus, he was the son of an Iranian noble, the elder Cambyses, and a Median princess, daughter of Astyages......Click the link for more information. grew strong, Nabonidus allied himself with CroesusCroesus, d. c.547 B.C., king of Lydia (560–c.547 B.C.), noted for his great wealth. He was the son of Alyattes. He continued his father's policy of conquering the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, but on the whole he was friendly to the Greeks, and he is supposed to have given.....Click the link for more information. of Lydia and Amasis IIAmasis II,d. 525 B.C., king of ancient Egypt (569–525 B.C.), of the XXVI dynasty. In a military revolt he dethroned Apries. He erected temples and other buildings at Memphis and Saïs and encouraged Greek merchants and artisans to settle at Naucratis......Click the link for more information. of Egypt, but to no avail. In 538 B.C. the kingdom fell to Cyrus with no resistance. Nabonidus' scholars preserved information valuable to modern archaeologists. Cuneiform records indicate that BelshazzarBelshazzar, according to the Bible, son of Nebuchadnezzar and last king of Babylon. The Book of Daniel relates that, at his feast, handwriting appeared on the wall. Daniel interpreted it as a prophecy of doom; that night Babylonia fell to the otherwise unknown Darius the Mede......Click the link for more information. was Nabonidus' son and his coregent during the last years of Babylon.

Nabonidus

the last Babylonian king; ruled from 556 to 539 B.C. An Aramaean by origin, Nabonidus strove to unite all the Aramaean tribes of Southwest Asia into a single state to wage a struggle against Persia. In the course often years, he conquered Taima and other regions of Arabia and left his son Belshazzar as vicegerent in Babylon. Nabonidus carried out religious reforms and patronized the cult of the moon god Sin. Babylon fell to the Persians in the autumn of 539 B.C., and Nabonidus was taken prisoner.

For a discussion of the quasi-use of celestial divination in the Neo-Babylonian inscriptions of Nabonidus, see Paul-Richard Berger, "Imaginare Astrologie in spatbabylonischer Propaganda," in Die Rolle der Astronomie in den Kulturen Mesopotamiens, ed.

Thus, during the first millennium, the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal and the Babylonian king Nabonidus found in The Cuthean Legend a convenient excuse for inaction against their own enemies, the Cimmerians and Medes, respectively.

The Babylonian king Nabonidus, who was defeated and deposed by Cyrus, is denounced as an impious oppressor of the people of Babylonia and his low-born origins are implicitly contrasted to Cyrus's kingly heritage.

A well-known inscription of king Nabonidus commemorating the installation of his daughter En-nigaldi-Nanna as an entu-priestess of the moon-god Sin in Ur contains two lines in which the king mentions that he "[e]xamined an old inscription of Enanedu the e ntu -priestess of Ur, daughter of Kudur-Mabuk, sister of Rim-Sin, king of Ur (.

Some sub-sections of chapters are completely devoted to a particular king and his era (Naram-Sin of Akkad, Rim-Sin of Larsa, Shamshi-Adad of Upper Mesopotamia, Hammurabi of Babylon, Assurnasirpal II and Sennacherib of Assyria, Nabonidus of Babylon, Antio-chus I Soter, Mithridates I, Shapur I, and Shapur II).

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